Gmail enables iPhone users to filter junk mail

October 10, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Q. I receive e-mail on my iPhone through my e-mail account with Time Warner (Roadrunner). Is there any way to set up a filter for junk mail?

On my Mac, about 80 percent of what I receive (correctly) goes to the junk mail file. But on my iPhone, everything goes to one incoming mail file, and I spend a lot of time deleting junk. Is there a solution to this problem?

A. There isn’t an app for that, but there is a solution, says Alison Cremeans at Raleigh, N.C., Web development firm Atlantic BT.

Though you can’t set up a filter on your iPhone like you can in Mail or Outlook, you can route your e-mail through a spam filter at Gmail using its “Mail Fetcher” service.

If you don’t have a Gmail account, sign up for one at gmail.com.

Once you’ve done that, or if you already have a Gmail address, log in and select “Settings” in the top right corner. You’ll see a selection of tabs; choose “Accounts and Import.” Halfway down the list, find and choose “Add Pop3 Email Account.” The Mail Fetcher set-up tool will guide you through the short set-up process.

You can route up to five e-mail accounts through your Gmail account, and each one of them will use the same spam filter. This means that your Gmail address is the only mail account you’ll need on your iPhone, and it will have very little, if any, spam.

For more information about Mail Fetcher and how to set it up, visit http://tinyurl.com/geeksgmailfetcher/.

Even if you read your e-mail through Gmail, you may want messages you send to come from your Roadrunner account. The folks at Google thought of that, too. Follow this link to find out how to add a custom “From” address: http://tinyurl.com/geeksgmailfrom/.

Finally, to make checking your e-mail less time-consuming, Gmail has just released the new “Priority Inbox” feature. It allows you to separate your most important e-mail from everything else, especially the spam. Look for the bright orange link at the top right of your Gmail home page.

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